Carney: "I had not heard that comment. I would simply say that the president's focus from day one ... has been on the middle class."

More: "I'll happily talk at length about the president's record supporting helping make a more secure middle class."

Q: Do you have any information about who is behind the suicide bombing?

Carney says he's seen published reports but has no other information.

Q: Increasing violence in Syria... how concerned about the country's chemical weapons?

Carney says the Syrian government has a responsibility to protect their chemical weapons stores.

Question on the Israel/Bulgaria attack.

Carney says that U.S. commitment to Israel security remains "unshakable."

Q: Welfare reform question.

Carney: Says the reforms are designed to accelerate job placement.

More: "I have been surprised by the hypopcrisy of our critics since many of them have in the past supported and even proposed such waivers."

Carney names names: Romney, Barbour, etc.

Carney: "Everyone I named by name in the past supported these kind of waivers."

Q: Jobs council question. Why hasn't it met?

Carney says that Obama gets advice from people all the time.

Carney says the president has "got a lot of his plate."

Q: Sequester question. Could it be negotiated in a lame duck?

Carney: "The president believes that Congress should act now to render moot the sequester by passing balanced deficit and debt reduction."

More: "If Congress doesn't do that now, it must do that after the election... the alternative is to ignore the problem that's easily fixable. Congress promised before the nation, when bipartisan majorities in both houses voted for the Budget Control Act..." that they were going to "embrace the challenge."

Carney confirms that Obama spoke with Putin; he "believes" it was about Syria.

More: "The fact of the matter is these programs ... gave out loans on a merit basis and that's been well established. Republicans in the House have been investigating this stuff for more than a year. And do you know what they got? Nothing."

Carney gets another question on Wheaton College joining the lawsuit against Obama's contraception mandate.